When is a zealot not a zealot? When the zealously zealot is arguing against zealotry.
Apparently.
Owen Jones righteously exclaims in The Guardian "Anti-trans zealots, know this: history will judge you."
Just in case you're wondering who the anti-trans zealots are, the rollcall of honour is:
US tech reporter for The Daily Telegraph Olivia Rudgard
Chief Political Correspondent for The Telegraph Christopher Hope
Daily Mail columnist Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail columnist Steve Doughty
Times journalist Janice Turner
And everyone else who fails to agree with Owen Jones.
The piece conflates so many ideas and tropes it's hard to untangle it all.
Janice Turner, who received much ire from Jones for her transphobic stance on Munroe Bergdorf's dismissal by the NSPCC for pointing out that someone who did a Playboy shoot, wrote homophobic tweets and, most importantly, suggested children get in touch with her privately, gets a lot of Jones's, dare I say almost religious, wrath:
“Children sacrificed to appease trans lobby” was the headline on an opinion piece in the Times, conjuring up both the image of child sacrifice, and implying that trans people – one of the most marginalised minorities in Britain – wield sinister, disproportionate power. The pejorative use of “the gay lobby” is now widely accepted to be a statement of bigotry – how then is “the trans lobby” any different?
The trans lobby wielding sinister, disproportionate power will be covered in another blog. Sinister is not the correct term, I think that's hyperbole. Suspect, yes. Disproportionate? Oh dear god, yes.
Jones asks, what's the difference between the gay lobby and the trans lobby? Two things spring to mind:
One, homosexuality is biological (we all agree on this, right? Neurological, genetic, something biological, it isn't a psychological preference, n'est pas?).
Transgender is psychological (it has no basis in anything biological, in fact its rationale is anti-biological in the remit of arguing you can change your sex). It is (despite news headlines to the contrary, yet another blog methinks) still considered a mental illness at root. Otherwise, what is it?
Two, the gay lobby does not affect any other group, minority or otherwise (literally, two consenting men or two consenting women fucking or doing other sexy time things to each other makes no material difference to anyone's lives).
The trans lobby's rationale is (and Jones argues this elsewhere) that trans women should have the same rights as natal (biological) women and should be able to access the same spaces and same agencies as natal women. This profoundly affects the lives of natal women.
So they are two completely different things? Despite the T being in LGBT Transgender has nothing to do with sexuality.
In fact, Stonewall, the LGBT lobby organization makes this clear in their "Truth about Trans" section (I keep repeating this because trans lobbyists themselves don't seem to have read it):
"Can you be trans and gay?
Sexual orientation (who you are attracted to) is completely unrelated to gender identity (who you are). You can be trans and gay, trans and straight, trans and bi, asexual, or anything else – just as a cis person can be. Simple."
Simple. But not for Owen Jones.
Jones continues: "The object of the article’s ire [Turner's piece in The Times] was the rise in referrals of teenagers to gender clinics; it claimed that “butch” lesbians were being pressured to transition to men. But as Ruth Hunt – chief executive of Stonewall, a champion of trans rights and a self-identifying butch lesbian – puts it, “very few people who access support go on to transition”. The increase was down to more young people discussing gender identity, as attitudes become more accepting. Undoubtedly, though, more are coming out as trans: the same happened with gay and bisexual young people." [my italics].
Now, I don't know where Jones gets his data from (oh yes, he doesn't mention data because this is an opinion piece full of zealous hyperbole) but there's no evidence that there ever was a boom in gay and bisexual people "coming out."
Data as far back as 1992 in the UK showed that between 3 and 6% were probably queer (gay, lesbian, bi). A survey in 2005 showed 6%. A survey in 2008 showed 6%. A survey in 2009 showed 5.8%. A survey in 2014 showed 5.4%. The ONS statistical survey 2016 found 2% were queer. Intriguingly, however, there was a profound statistical hike from 2015 to 2016 in the ONS data. It leapt from 1.7% to 2% self identifying as queer. Is this because young people are discussing homosexuality now? Like, we didn't discuss it before 2015? The rise is in line with the rise in self identifying trans people.
In the last five years there has been a 240% increase in child referrals for gender dysphoria. Year on year there's an increase of over 25% in youth referrals to The Tavistock. There were 97 in 2009/10, which rose to 2,519 in 2017/18.
The number of girls receiving referrals increased from 40 to 1,806, while the number of boys rose from 56 to 713.
A study published on Plos One suggested there was a new phenomena called Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) where children (primarily girls) show no signs of gender dysphoria but suddenly post puberty begin to experience the mental illness. The study was widely disparaged and the author was forced to rescind it (the protest came from sinister and disproportionately powerful trans lobby groups (it wasn't criticized by other academics)) and the study was reassessed and a corrected form was published the following year (with the same results but different wording). The main criticism was the suggestion that teenage girls copy their peer group. I will write further on it another day and I just have to blog on Liz Duck Chong's piece in The Guardian zealously (I mean really zealously) dispariging it, because the logic of Chong's argument is genuinely hilarious, I mean even by trans lobbyist standards). However, the data does show an astonishing increase in teenage girls self identifying as trans in recent years.
Jones's assertion that "The increase was down to more young people discussing gender identity, as attitudes become more accepting," is troubling on two levels. Apart from his giving no evidence for this assertion, it seems to suggest that ROGD is indeed real. I mean, does people discussing sexuality lead to more gay people? If that were true then Muslim parents picketing LGBT lessons in Birmingham may have a point after all. Does something becoming more accepted lead to great numbers of that thing? Or is that greater numbers of that thing lead to acceptance? Whichever, Jones seems to imply that if children talk more and more about gender identity more and more children will become trans. Which is ROGD. Or dare I say it, Richard Dawkins' concept of the meme. A social (media?) virus.
Of course, Jones doesn't just vent his spleen on zealots. He gives us positive role models to look to.
"There are brilliant trans voices emerging – like Shon Faye, Paris Lees and Munroe Bergdorf – but the media surely have a responsibility to provide a greater platform. [my italics]" Hee hee, you have to laugh (see links to Lees, Faye, et al). Until you remember that Jones defended Munroe Bergdorf in great detail in The Guardian without addressing any of the concerns highlighted by Janice Turner.
I don't know anything about Shon Faye beyond her piece in The Guardian about how she now understands what it's like being a woman:
"The flashes of misogyny I witnessed when I was younger are now, as they are for most women, a daily reality."
And how trans women, including non-transitioned, should be able to access women's rape crisis centres. So clearly she doesn't really understand what it's like being a woman at all.
Paris Lees is handily linked in the article to her own article in The Guardian (it's like some sort of club isn't it? Oh if only these trans voices had a platform!).
"I’ve been telling people I’m a girl, and would be happier if they would treat me like one, since I was four. My parents tried to force me – like many trans people – to be the gender they thought I should be, causing us years of unnecessary misery."
I'm always perplexed by trans children, how they seem to have an astonishingly advanced understanding of sociology. How the hell would you know what gender you were when you were four? You're barely conscious, the mirror phase where you start to recognize your own reflection is still a recent memory. How can you know you are really a girl inside when you're a four year old boy?
But hey, let's assume that Lees believes this and we accept it. But then she adds "You cannot “turn” a child trans any more than you can turn a child gay."
Well, homosexuality is without doubt biological. There's no evidence that transgender is anything other than a psychological condition. While I'm not saying you can "make" someone trans I'm sort of saying it's certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility. Though, I point you back to Jones suggesting that people talking about something can lead to more people being that something. I mean, I realize Jones is suggesting that there are already loads of gender questioning people and talking about it makes it more acceptable but then why when year on year LGB Pride parades have grown and there's the ubiquity of gay characters in the media and well, everyone's metrosexual now huh?.. Why hasn't there been an absolute explosion in the number of queer people? It just simply hasn't happened. Is it because trans is a relatively new concept? Well, that makes no sense as the trans community are at pains to point out that historically there's always been trans people and Jones himself suggests elsewhere that Stonewall, the gay riots in New York in 1969 were led by trans people. So, uh, why has the number of gay people stayed relatively static whilst in the past 6 years there's been a veritable mushrooming of trans people, trans subsects, gender variants and so on? An obvious answer is social media (and its adherence to conformity) but there's no hard evidence for it (because it's impossible to quantify) and it smacks of moral panic.
Lees, like Jones, like most people writing about LGBT issues are happy to skip lightly from homosexuality to transgender and treat them exactly the same, as if they are the same thing. Lees writes:
"You cannot “turn” a child trans any more than you can turn a child gay. Nor can you stop a child from being trans any more than you can force a child who is gay to grow up heterosexual. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t bully someone into being someone else, and why would you even want to? That’s why all professional psychological organisations, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the NHS condemn conversion therapy as dangerous and ineffective."
Conversion therapy (therapy to attempt to make a queer person straight) is dangerous and ineffective so...uh...you can't change a trans child. No logical cause and effect here. Where's the evidence that you can or can't turn a child trans? If more people talking about gender issues has led to this explosion of confusing gender identities doesn't that suggest the opposite? After all, there's a reason that the algorithmic targeted adverts scandal on Facebook and equivalent issues for "fake news" and the election of Donald T have a pretty solid basis. You can persuade people to do things unconsciously, to make them think they are choosing that option.
"But what if it’s just a phase, I hear you cry. Well, maybe it is. The only thing to do is let them work it out over time. If you listen to medical experts you will know that puberty blockers are reversible, and gender reassignment surgery is performed only on adults in the UK."
Depends on how you define adult. Surgery is legal in Scotland aged 16 but voting is limited to 18 year olds still.
And puberty blockers are problematic because there are literally no studies on long term effects. The NHS caution "The blocker is a physically reversible intervention: if the young person stops taking the blocker their body will continue to develop as it was previously. However, we don’t know the full psychological effects of the blocker or whether it alters the course of adolescent brain development."
"So no harm is done by allowing children to express themselves however they feel happiest, in contrast to the very real harm done when parents try to suppress these expressions,"argues Lees.
We'll see.
Lees happily quotes the Stonewall School report as fact: "Almost half of trans school pupils in the UK have attempted suicide. Not “thought about”. Attempted. One in nine of those pupils has received death threats. Eight out of 10 young trans people have self-harmed."
Jones also happily reports the bad news as hard fact: "In today’s Britain, eight in 10 trans young people report self-harm and nearly half have tried to kill themselves. How is a minority so afflicted with transphobia-induced mental distress supposed to feel with this relentless media campaign? Note that 64% of trans school pupils have been bullied for their gender identity; and 38% of trans people have suffered physical intimidation."
I wonder if either have actually read it? I've written a piece on the ridiculous methodology of the Stonewall report elsewhere (no natal birth data, mixing of gender/sex in graphics, no data on age range, no data on selection, 37% of those surveyed were trans, the ONS has trans population at 0.2%, I'm sorry I can't do the maths). As a study it's worthless. To report it as factual data is disingenuous.
"Less rigid gender roles in society would have helped me growing up. If masculinity wasn’t so heavily policed, maybe I could have gone to school in, say, a tiara and the sky wouldn’t have fallen in," writes Lees.
I'm perplexed as to why Paris Lees at four years old would want to wear a tiara. What would make a four year old so desperate to appear as a stereotyped example of their opposite gender and why would that then mean that inside she's a woman? Where does a child (male or female) get the idea that being a woman or girl is wearing pretty shiny things?
"Family support would have helped. I don’t believe my father forced me to present as a boy because he is evil. He thought he was doing what was best for me. My parents loved me but they just didn’t know what to do with a child like me – because, for decades, journalists have failed to inform the public of the facts about trans people and chosen to recycle monstrous and inaccurate stereotypes about us instead."
Thank goodness that's been redressed. Now we have monstrous and inaccurate stereotypes about trans suicide rates and what radical feminists think.
Lees argues that it would have helped her if her school had had a clear bullying policy:
"Mine didn’t, of course, because of section 28 of the Local Government Act, which banned the “promotion of homosexuality in schools”. In effect it silenced teachers, who were too afraid to even mention gay people. The Tories introduced it while kids like me were in our cots, following a moral panic about the imagined dangers gay rights posed to children, whipped up by the rightwing press. Sound familiar?"
No. What has that got to do with transgender?
Oh wait...silenced teachers...afraid to mention things...let me see...
Or you can check that dreadful transphobe, Kathleen Stock's twitter feed that links to Stonewall's Champions training where lecturers (and teachers) can learn the 'correct' language to use with gender conflicted or transgender people Twitter. Orwellian, like Kafkaesque, gets over used but...
Jones concludes by suggesting that, at present, trans people have to go through a degrading process:
"The main driver for the current backlash is the government’s proposals – backed by Labour – to reform the Gender Recognition Act, which currently imposes a degrading, bureaucratic, medicalised two-year process on trans people before a panel can grant a gender recognition certificate."
He doesn't offer a different vision. Unfortunately, in the time since the GRA consultation, "gender diversity" is now being accepted without any talk of medical or psychological intervention. At universities (and, if trans lobbysists have their way, in schools) gender diversity is already an accepted thing. In wider society, it's catching on that you can simply define yourself by whatever term you wish. Trans, gender fluid, gender queer, well, you know the story. The GRA, rather like cannabis regulation, is quickly becoming redundant. Everyone smokes weed even though it's a class B drug with a possibility of a 5 year prison sentence for possession Gov.uk. Yet no one enforces this, no one takes any notice of it.
Obviously I'm not likening using cannabis to being trans but rather likening the way that laws are bypassed as ideas or actions become acceptable.
Jones finishes with the rallying cry:
"And just as gay rights was once seen as the preserve of the “loony left”, trans people are desperately lacking in influential media allies."
You have to titter.
Ultimately, reading Jones's polemic, and as one of those zealots who points his finger at, I find myself wishfully thinking, I hope he's right. For if he's not and I am then things are going to get much, much worse, more confusing, and reality and reason will be completely lost, as well as the hard fought rights of women (natal ones). I really hope he is right.
Apparently.
Owen Jones righteously exclaims in The Guardian "Anti-trans zealots, know this: history will judge you."
Just in case you're wondering who the anti-trans zealots are, the rollcall of honour is:
US tech reporter for The Daily Telegraph Olivia Rudgard
Chief Political Correspondent for The Telegraph Christopher Hope
Daily Mail columnist Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail columnist Steve Doughty
Times journalist Janice Turner
And everyone else who fails to agree with Owen Jones.
The piece conflates so many ideas and tropes it's hard to untangle it all.
Janice Turner, who received much ire from Jones for her transphobic stance on Munroe Bergdorf's dismissal by the NSPCC for pointing out that someone who did a Playboy shoot, wrote homophobic tweets and, most importantly, suggested children get in touch with her privately, gets a lot of Jones's, dare I say almost religious, wrath:
“Children sacrificed to appease trans lobby” was the headline on an opinion piece in the Times, conjuring up both the image of child sacrifice, and implying that trans people – one of the most marginalised minorities in Britain – wield sinister, disproportionate power. The pejorative use of “the gay lobby” is now widely accepted to be a statement of bigotry – how then is “the trans lobby” any different?
The trans lobby wielding sinister, disproportionate power will be covered in another blog. Sinister is not the correct term, I think that's hyperbole. Suspect, yes. Disproportionate? Oh dear god, yes.
Jones asks, what's the difference between the gay lobby and the trans lobby? Two things spring to mind:
One, homosexuality is biological (we all agree on this, right? Neurological, genetic, something biological, it isn't a psychological preference, n'est pas?).
Transgender is psychological (it has no basis in anything biological, in fact its rationale is anti-biological in the remit of arguing you can change your sex). It is (despite news headlines to the contrary, yet another blog methinks) still considered a mental illness at root. Otherwise, what is it?
Two, the gay lobby does not affect any other group, minority or otherwise (literally, two consenting men or two consenting women fucking or doing other sexy time things to each other makes no material difference to anyone's lives).
The trans lobby's rationale is (and Jones argues this elsewhere) that trans women should have the same rights as natal (biological) women and should be able to access the same spaces and same agencies as natal women. This profoundly affects the lives of natal women.
So they are two completely different things? Despite the T being in LGBT Transgender has nothing to do with sexuality.
In fact, Stonewall, the LGBT lobby organization makes this clear in their "Truth about Trans" section (I keep repeating this because trans lobbyists themselves don't seem to have read it):
"Can you be trans and gay?
Sexual orientation (who you are attracted to) is completely unrelated to gender identity (who you are). You can be trans and gay, trans and straight, trans and bi, asexual, or anything else – just as a cis person can be. Simple."
Simple. But not for Owen Jones.
Jones continues: "The object of the article’s ire [Turner's piece in The Times] was the rise in referrals of teenagers to gender clinics; it claimed that “butch” lesbians were being pressured to transition to men. But as Ruth Hunt – chief executive of Stonewall, a champion of trans rights and a self-identifying butch lesbian – puts it, “very few people who access support go on to transition”. The increase was down to more young people discussing gender identity, as attitudes become more accepting. Undoubtedly, though, more are coming out as trans: the same happened with gay and bisexual young people." [my italics].
Now, I don't know where Jones gets his data from (oh yes, he doesn't mention data because this is an opinion piece full of zealous hyperbole) but there's no evidence that there ever was a boom in gay and bisexual people "coming out."
Data as far back as 1992 in the UK showed that between 3 and 6% were probably queer (gay, lesbian, bi). A survey in 2005 showed 6%. A survey in 2008 showed 6%. A survey in 2009 showed 5.8%. A survey in 2014 showed 5.4%. The ONS statistical survey 2016 found 2% were queer. Intriguingly, however, there was a profound statistical hike from 2015 to 2016 in the ONS data. It leapt from 1.7% to 2% self identifying as queer. Is this because young people are discussing homosexuality now? Like, we didn't discuss it before 2015? The rise is in line with the rise in self identifying trans people.
In the last five years there has been a 240% increase in child referrals for gender dysphoria. Year on year there's an increase of over 25% in youth referrals to The Tavistock. There were 97 in 2009/10, which rose to 2,519 in 2017/18.
The number of girls receiving referrals increased from 40 to 1,806, while the number of boys rose from 56 to 713.
A study published on Plos One suggested there was a new phenomena called Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) where children (primarily girls) show no signs of gender dysphoria but suddenly post puberty begin to experience the mental illness. The study was widely disparaged and the author was forced to rescind it (the protest came from sinister and disproportionately powerful trans lobby groups (it wasn't criticized by other academics)) and the study was reassessed and a corrected form was published the following year (with the same results but different wording). The main criticism was the suggestion that teenage girls copy their peer group. I will write further on it another day and I just have to blog on Liz Duck Chong's piece in The Guardian zealously (I mean really zealously) dispariging it, because the logic of Chong's argument is genuinely hilarious, I mean even by trans lobbyist standards). However, the data does show an astonishing increase in teenage girls self identifying as trans in recent years.
Jones's assertion that "The increase was down to more young people discussing gender identity, as attitudes become more accepting," is troubling on two levels. Apart from his giving no evidence for this assertion, it seems to suggest that ROGD is indeed real. I mean, does people discussing sexuality lead to more gay people? If that were true then Muslim parents picketing LGBT lessons in Birmingham may have a point after all. Does something becoming more accepted lead to great numbers of that thing? Or is that greater numbers of that thing lead to acceptance? Whichever, Jones seems to imply that if children talk more and more about gender identity more and more children will become trans. Which is ROGD. Or dare I say it, Richard Dawkins' concept of the meme. A social (media?) virus.
Of course, Jones doesn't just vent his spleen on zealots. He gives us positive role models to look to.
"There are brilliant trans voices emerging – like Shon Faye, Paris Lees and Munroe Bergdorf – but the media surely have a responsibility to provide a greater platform. [my italics]" Hee hee, you have to laugh (see links to Lees, Faye, et al). Until you remember that Jones defended Munroe Bergdorf in great detail in The Guardian without addressing any of the concerns highlighted by Janice Turner.
I don't know anything about Shon Faye beyond her piece in The Guardian about how she now understands what it's like being a woman:
"The flashes of misogyny I witnessed when I was younger are now, as they are for most women, a daily reality."
And how trans women, including non-transitioned, should be able to access women's rape crisis centres. So clearly she doesn't really understand what it's like being a woman at all.
Paris Lees is handily linked in the article to her own article in The Guardian (it's like some sort of club isn't it? Oh if only these trans voices had a platform!).
"I’ve been telling people I’m a girl, and would be happier if they would treat me like one, since I was four. My parents tried to force me – like many trans people – to be the gender they thought I should be, causing us years of unnecessary misery."
I'm always perplexed by trans children, how they seem to have an astonishingly advanced understanding of sociology. How the hell would you know what gender you were when you were four? You're barely conscious, the mirror phase where you start to recognize your own reflection is still a recent memory. How can you know you are really a girl inside when you're a four year old boy?
But hey, let's assume that Lees believes this and we accept it. But then she adds "You cannot “turn” a child trans any more than you can turn a child gay."
Well, homosexuality is without doubt biological. There's no evidence that transgender is anything other than a psychological condition. While I'm not saying you can "make" someone trans I'm sort of saying it's certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility. Though, I point you back to Jones suggesting that people talking about something can lead to more people being that something. I mean, I realize Jones is suggesting that there are already loads of gender questioning people and talking about it makes it more acceptable but then why when year on year LGB Pride parades have grown and there's the ubiquity of gay characters in the media and well, everyone's metrosexual now huh?.. Why hasn't there been an absolute explosion in the number of queer people? It just simply hasn't happened. Is it because trans is a relatively new concept? Well, that makes no sense as the trans community are at pains to point out that historically there's always been trans people and Jones himself suggests elsewhere that Stonewall, the gay riots in New York in 1969 were led by trans people. So, uh, why has the number of gay people stayed relatively static whilst in the past 6 years there's been a veritable mushrooming of trans people, trans subsects, gender variants and so on? An obvious answer is social media (and its adherence to conformity) but there's no hard evidence for it (because it's impossible to quantify) and it smacks of moral panic.
Lees, like Jones, like most people writing about LGBT issues are happy to skip lightly from homosexuality to transgender and treat them exactly the same, as if they are the same thing. Lees writes:
"You cannot “turn” a child trans any more than you can turn a child gay. Nor can you stop a child from being trans any more than you can force a child who is gay to grow up heterosexual. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t bully someone into being someone else, and why would you even want to? That’s why all professional psychological organisations, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the NHS condemn conversion therapy as dangerous and ineffective."
Conversion therapy (therapy to attempt to make a queer person straight) is dangerous and ineffective so...uh...you can't change a trans child. No logical cause and effect here. Where's the evidence that you can or can't turn a child trans? If more people talking about gender issues has led to this explosion of confusing gender identities doesn't that suggest the opposite? After all, there's a reason that the algorithmic targeted adverts scandal on Facebook and equivalent issues for "fake news" and the election of Donald T have a pretty solid basis. You can persuade people to do things unconsciously, to make them think they are choosing that option.
"But what if it’s just a phase, I hear you cry. Well, maybe it is. The only thing to do is let them work it out over time. If you listen to medical experts you will know that puberty blockers are reversible, and gender reassignment surgery is performed only on adults in the UK."
Depends on how you define adult. Surgery is legal in Scotland aged 16 but voting is limited to 18 year olds still.
And puberty blockers are problematic because there are literally no studies on long term effects. The NHS caution "The blocker is a physically reversible intervention: if the young person stops taking the blocker their body will continue to develop as it was previously. However, we don’t know the full psychological effects of the blocker or whether it alters the course of adolescent brain development."
"So no harm is done by allowing children to express themselves however they feel happiest, in contrast to the very real harm done when parents try to suppress these expressions,"argues Lees.
We'll see.
Lees happily quotes the Stonewall School report as fact: "Almost half of trans school pupils in the UK have attempted suicide. Not “thought about”. Attempted. One in nine of those pupils has received death threats. Eight out of 10 young trans people have self-harmed."
Jones also happily reports the bad news as hard fact: "In today’s Britain, eight in 10 trans young people report self-harm and nearly half have tried to kill themselves. How is a minority so afflicted with transphobia-induced mental distress supposed to feel with this relentless media campaign? Note that 64% of trans school pupils have been bullied for their gender identity; and 38% of trans people have suffered physical intimidation."
I wonder if either have actually read it? I've written a piece on the ridiculous methodology of the Stonewall report elsewhere (no natal birth data, mixing of gender/sex in graphics, no data on age range, no data on selection, 37% of those surveyed were trans, the ONS has trans population at 0.2%, I'm sorry I can't do the maths). As a study it's worthless. To report it as factual data is disingenuous.
"Less rigid gender roles in society would have helped me growing up. If masculinity wasn’t so heavily policed, maybe I could have gone to school in, say, a tiara and the sky wouldn’t have fallen in," writes Lees.
I'm perplexed as to why Paris Lees at four years old would want to wear a tiara. What would make a four year old so desperate to appear as a stereotyped example of their opposite gender and why would that then mean that inside she's a woman? Where does a child (male or female) get the idea that being a woman or girl is wearing pretty shiny things?
"Family support would have helped. I don’t believe my father forced me to present as a boy because he is evil. He thought he was doing what was best for me. My parents loved me but they just didn’t know what to do with a child like me – because, for decades, journalists have failed to inform the public of the facts about trans people and chosen to recycle monstrous and inaccurate stereotypes about us instead."
Thank goodness that's been redressed. Now we have monstrous and inaccurate stereotypes about trans suicide rates and what radical feminists think.
Lees argues that it would have helped her if her school had had a clear bullying policy:
"Mine didn’t, of course, because of section 28 of the Local Government Act, which banned the “promotion of homosexuality in schools”. In effect it silenced teachers, who were too afraid to even mention gay people. The Tories introduced it while kids like me were in our cots, following a moral panic about the imagined dangers gay rights posed to children, whipped up by the rightwing press. Sound familiar?"
No. What has that got to do with transgender?
Oh wait...silenced teachers...afraid to mention things...let me see...
Or you can check that dreadful transphobe, Kathleen Stock's twitter feed that links to Stonewall's Champions training where lecturers (and teachers) can learn the 'correct' language to use with gender conflicted or transgender people Twitter. Orwellian, like Kafkaesque, gets over used but...
Jones concludes by suggesting that, at present, trans people have to go through a degrading process:
"The main driver for the current backlash is the government’s proposals – backed by Labour – to reform the Gender Recognition Act, which currently imposes a degrading, bureaucratic, medicalised two-year process on trans people before a panel can grant a gender recognition certificate."
He doesn't offer a different vision. Unfortunately, in the time since the GRA consultation, "gender diversity" is now being accepted without any talk of medical or psychological intervention. At universities (and, if trans lobbysists have their way, in schools) gender diversity is already an accepted thing. In wider society, it's catching on that you can simply define yourself by whatever term you wish. Trans, gender fluid, gender queer, well, you know the story. The GRA, rather like cannabis regulation, is quickly becoming redundant. Everyone smokes weed even though it's a class B drug with a possibility of a 5 year prison sentence for possession Gov.uk. Yet no one enforces this, no one takes any notice of it.
Obviously I'm not likening using cannabis to being trans but rather likening the way that laws are bypassed as ideas or actions become acceptable.
Jones finishes with the rallying cry:
"And just as gay rights was once seen as the preserve of the “loony left”, trans people are desperately lacking in influential media allies."
You have to titter.
Ultimately, reading Jones's polemic, and as one of those zealots who points his finger at, I find myself wishfully thinking, I hope he's right. For if he's not and I am then things are going to get much, much worse, more confusing, and reality and reason will be completely lost, as well as the hard fought rights of women (natal ones). I really hope he is right.
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